Currently we are at two doggies and four chickens but come Wednesday we will be welcoming two new additions…..

I did lots of research about various pets that are good for kids. Although I would live to get a cow, some sheep and maybe a few goats, it doesn’t really work with living in town. So then on to smaller more house friendly pets.

Rabbits are cute….but I remember a friend having one when I was in high school and it would poop all over their house. So my memories of bunnies aren’t the greatest.

Guinea Pigs also have a bit of cuteness to them but I have read that they squeak a lot. Plus their cage would be on the ground and having a 60 lb pit bull jump at them would probably give them a heart attack. (as a side note Pumpkin would never hurt them, at most he would pin them down and hope that they would want to chase him….he did this to a chicken last summer and the chicken was unharmed!)

Lizards, snakes, frogs and anything with scales are out automatically because I just don’t like them….

I had hamsters as a child and had great memories of them so I started to read about them. Everything I read said that they are not the greatest pets for little kids. BUT that rats were…..

Well, rats are gross, so that is out. So I read another post. And again it said rats. Nope. Not gonna happen. So I read another post. Again, rats…… Well, if they are that good with kids then maybe I should read about them.

Apparently they can be trained with voice commands (like a dog), you can train it to go in the litter box, and they are actually pretty cute.

I showed the kids a couple of pictures of rats and they were hooked! Now we just had to convince dad!!

He wasn’t too hard of a sell after he started to read a bit about how great they are with kids.

So with the OK from dad, I took to Kijiji which is my favourite place to find a great deal!

We found a cage for $40.00 which is a steal!!

Our rat cage we found on kijiji

Then I found a local breeder (also on Kijiji) who had some babies ready in a couple weeks. I made an appointment and the kids (and me) were very excited.

These are the little cuties we went to see:

Cute little ratties

We had a nice visit with them. It was nice to see that they were coming from a clean and spacious home with lots of other pets.

It has been a long time since I have seen such a big smile on Ella’s face. We looked at the two black ones. I did like the white one with patches. (I told the kids that I refused to get a white one with red eyes, just too creepy).